Do forgiving God primes strengthen support for state sanctioned punishment?

Katherine O'Lone, Royal Holloway, University of London, LONDON

Ryan McKay, Royal Holloway, University of London

Abstract

Do forgiving God primes strengthen support for state-sanctioned
punishment?
Laurin et al (2012) found that beliefs in powerful, intervening Gods (both in
general and when made salient) reduce people’s endorsement of
state-sanctioned punishment. In light of this, we investigated whether the manner
in which God intervenes (via forgiveness or punishment) influences people’s
endorsement of state-sanctioned punishment.
Across four studies we explored a) whether priming participants with a forgiving
God and b) whether salient, forgiving God beliefs increase endorsements of
state-sanctioned punishment. The rationale being that a forgiving God will lead
people to view punishment as a responsibility that lies with them rather than one
outsourced to God. Our results revealed no evidence for effects of forgiving God
primes or salient forgiving god beliefs on endorsements of state-sanctioned
punishment. We discuss the implications of these findings for extant theories of
religious prosociality and proportionality-based accounts of morality.